


rapto

by mistycodec



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Relationship, Resurrection Challenge, Temporary Character Death, Torture, the silva/q is light folks i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 09:32:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14161878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistycodec/pseuds/mistycodec
Summary: play a record in reverse and the music becomes twisted, distorted, and fundamentally different. drop a record and it scratches, and will never play the same againor, a scratched record of Skyfall, where Silva does not follow Bond to Scotland, but goes after Q instead





	rapto

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AtoTheBean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtoTheBean/gifts).



> This is my 1/2 of the MI6 Cafe's March Resurrection Challenge, of which the theme was the duality of death and resurrection. I got paired with the lovely atothebean on this one, who was such a dear to work with and incredibly patient with my poor-at-time-management-and-bad-with-deadlines ass.
> 
> This fic explores the death aspect of the challenge. I hope you all enjoy!

It was only an hour or two after Silva had been allowed through the fortified firewalls of MI6’s network, and Q-Branch was pure pandemonium. In one corner of the room stood several boffins with worried creases etched into their foreheads surrounding Silva’s battered laptop, the ground zero of the attack. They’d attached several close-networked devices to the machine to run analysis and tests on how the hell the rouge agent had managed to hack his way in, but Silva’s computer was a clever little thing, and so far once the program that had allowed Silva to escape had executed, the laptop was once more impenetrable.

Q stood at his helm, the glass podium at the back of the room, furiously paging line by line through logfiles to determine Silva’s exact point of entry. His system was foolproof, no one should have been able to slip inside unnoticed without credentials, even with a direct wired connection to the network.

R paces around Q’s desk, giving him a briefing of what files were corrupted or otherwise altered by Silva’s worm, the progress or lack thereof of the cracking team, and Mallory’s acting orders now that M, their M, had disappeared along with 007. With each new bullet point, R’s voice pitched higher and higher until it was nothing more than a breathy squeak and her face flushed a deep red.

Suffice to say, things were hell.

“R, if you’d be so kind as to bring me another cuppa,” Q says, completely unperturbed to R working herself into a frenzied tizzy, and he slides his empty, tea-stained mug towards the edge of the desk without so much as breaking eye contact from his CLI.

R lets out a loud, exasperated sigh and shoots Q a steely glare. “Q,” she says, “you are absolutely impossible.” Begrudgingly, she swipes Q’s mug off the podium and hands it off to some poor, flustered intern before hissing Q’s preferred tea concoction into his ear—earl grey with enough sugar to give an elephant a heart attack—and striding out of the room.

“Ah,” Q muses aloud, “I hope I haven’t upset her.” He spares no more than a moment’s thought to the question before diving back into his work. After all, he was still on cleanup duty from the _incident_ earlier that morning, and Q knew he would not step down from his podium until Six’s firewalls had been strengthened tenfold.

 

              It was probably several hours on when Q glanced up from his laptop screen to find the whole of Q-Branch completely empty. His once-warm and fresh cup of tea had long grown cold, which Q found out the hard way as he spluttered upon taking a rather large and ungainly sip. _Just what time is it?_

The answer, Q found, was approximately half-past eight. No wonder things seemed a ghost town, everyone had likely gone home for the day. Q swears aloud, knowing he’s missed his train back to his flat, and if he were to leave now he’d be stuck in the tube for at least an hour, perhaps more, until another night line came through.

Ah well. Perhaps he’d take a lie down in his office, a bit of a nap to nurse his oncoming headache, and then he’d get back to work.

 _Yes, perhaps,_ Q thinks, taking another sip of tea and doing nothing of the sort to move away from his laptop, instead finishing typing out one last line of code before having a go at testing the new security measures he’d put in place.

“Perhaps if you were to look up from that little computer screen of yours on occasion, you wouldn’t lose track of time so easily, Mister Q.”

An icy chill races down Q’s spine and his hands freeze over the keyboard mid-execution. He recognizes the voice, dimly, the little latino inflections he’d heard only by quietly tapping into grainy comm lines just a few hours prior, before Q had become horribly busy correcting an oversight he should have seen coming. The voice was soft yet deeply dangerous with lilting vowels unbecoming of a dangerous, rogue agent, yet Q had felt safe knowing the man the voice belonged to was safely behind several layers of bulletproof, shatterproof glass. And now, that was clearly no longer the case.

He feels the muzzle of a pistol dig deep into the small of his back, firm and unyielding. If Q moves, the man behind him will gun him down as effortlessly as executing a cleanup script. He’d be dead before he hit the floor.

“Silva,” Q says, trying quite hard to keep his voice firm. “How nice of you to drop in.”

“Oh yes, the pleasure is all mine, young Quartermaster.” Silva’s lips brush against the shell of Q’s ear, fleetingly, and Q cannot help the shudder of revulsion that ripples through him at the action. “So nice to finally meet you, face to face.”

“And how, exactly, is it face to face if I can’t see yours?”

Silva barks out a laugh at that and tuts gently like a scolding parent. “Not that it truly matters. It is close enough, wouldn’t you say?”

“How did you get in here, Silva?” Q interrupts, a gentle sidestep to Silva’s calm yet purposeful intimidation. “You can’t have used the tube tunnels again, we’ve put some of our best agents at every crossroads to ensure the same… _error_ won’t be allowed twice.”

The man behind him chuckles and ignores Q’s question as easily as Q had ignored his own. “I see you’ve been leaving a little trail for me to follow, yes? Little… _pip pip pips_ no one else would be able to track but me, correct?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” Q replies. He takes a moment to glance about the room without making it obvious he’s sizing up his options of escape. Q-Branch is unfortunately empty at this time of night with no one within earshot should Q choose to call out for help. To his left and right, towards the back of the room, the wall monitors flick through several security feeds of the surrounding halls, all just as empty as Q-Branch. Triggering the silent alarm beneath his desk would be too obvious of a move and Silva would spot it in an instant. Though it would buy him some time, his position at the podium was too far away to make a run for cover or any of the exits, and Q realizes with extreme trepidation that this is one confrontation he cannot escape from. Silva has him trapped, for lack of a better word, with a gun at his back and a promise of a swift death should he not comply.

“What is in Scotland, Q?” Silva asks. He stalks to the other side of Q’s desk, dragging the muzzle of the gun along the glass surface until it made a bone-achingly shrill noise that forced Q to squeeze his eyes shut and grit his teeth in pain. Silva slides a mobile across the desk until it enters Q’s view; on the screen shows a map program with the flashing dots of Q’s breadcrumbs, leading far to the north deep in the Scottish moors. “Mister Bond must have told you that much.”

“A bit slow on the uptake, are you? At the cost of repeating myself, I’ll say it again: I don’t know what you’re going on about.” Q allows himself the barest hint of a smile, a quirk of the lips he’s sure Silva won’t notice, enough to somewhat settle his nerves. “You oughtn’t have come back, every agent within the country knows your face, with orders to bring you back alive if found.”

Silva chuckles softly, giving Q s strange, almost pleased look. “A smart mouth to match a smart brain. No wonder Mommy replaced that old, dottering man with someone like you. Just…look at you,” Silva breathes, gesturing to Q’s body with slow, arcing hand movements. “A bit, ah, easy on the eyes, a brain to make up for the rest…you truly are the whole package.”

“I’ve no better way of determining 007’s whereabouts than you do, and even if I did, I would not be surrendering the details to you,” Q replies instead, determined to ignore whatever remarks Silva made that sent uncomfortable shivers through Q’s chilled skin. “You have a suspicious knack for locating, people, Silva, so why go to the trouble of asking me?”

This time, Q’s words give Silva enough pause for the smile on the man’s face to fade away. _Gotcha_.

“Ah, that must be it. You really don’t know where he is, do you?” Silva’s face colors several more shades of deep, murderous intent, yet Q continues. “You can’t fathom where he’s gone off with our M, so you’ve come back here, perhaps looking for someone he trusted to conceal his location.” Q steeples his hands for a moment and peers over the rim of his glasses at the man before him. “Am I correct?”

Silva smiles once more, teeth glinting a pearly, dangerous white. “Bravo, little Q. Perhaps you are as clever as everyone says you are.”

“Well, you’re out of luck, Mr. Silva, I’m afraid 007 doesn’t trust anyone, least of all me—”

In a flash, Silva is at Q’s side, twisting the man’s arm painfully backwards and slams it onto the podium. Something in Q’s arm pops sickeningly and an abrupt cry wrenches itself from Q’s lips. “You know, Q, I do hate when people lie to me.” He twists the boffin’s arm further and Q hisses through tightly clenched teeth. The pain radiates hotly from his shoulder down to the tips of his fingers, pulsing in sick, heady waves enough to make Q nearly pass out. “Perhaps you do not know who you are dealing with,” Silva hisses into Q’s ear. “I thought my little program would teach you some humility, yes?

“That right there is your shoulder, _puta_. A clean dislocation, nothing terribly… _messy_. Though, it can easily be made worse, if you don’t comply.” He reaches across the table and slides the phone closer to Q’s face, prone upon the glass surface of the podium. “Now, let’s try this again. Where are they going?”

“They went for a long walk, off a short pier, which is exactly where you should be going.”

“Wrong answer,” Silva replies.

He reaches down to grip a slender index finger on Q’s right hand, and with a quick twist of his wrist, he snaps the digit at the joint. Q howls in pain, thrashing about in an attempt to escape, but Silva’s hold does not yield.

“The are guards that patrol the halls here,” Q hisses between labored breaths. “They change shift about this time of night. You’ll be found out, Silva, whether you like it or not.”

“I doubt that very sincerely,” Silva replies. The gun is back, pressing hard into Q’s skin, and this time Q can smell the metallic tang surrounding Silva’s weapon, and he realizes with increasing trepidation that it’s been fired recently. “Do you think those guards would come to your rescue, like little princes, if they know who you really are?”

Q’s blood chills an icy cold, and Silva realizes he’s successfully struck a nerve.

“That’s right,” Silva says, the smile on his face palpable even though Q cannot turn his neck to meet the man’s eyes. “I know what you’ve done, Q. A past like that? _Eesh_ ,” he tuts. “So very, very hard to hide.”

Q’s left hand, the one he can still move, curls into a tight fist that shakes uncontrollably. “You know nothing, Silva, I can assure you of that.”

“I could expose you for who you are,” Silva whispers. “For all that destruction you caused, all those innocent lives lost—”

Q sucks in a sharp breath through his nose. “M already knows, you can’t… _harm_ me with that.”

“Ah, but do the others? Does our friend Mister Bond know of what you’ve done?”

Q is silent for a moment too long and Silva twists Q’s arm again, enough for Q to feel his joint ben dangerously backwards. “You know, Q, I tire of these little games. Do you want me to break every bone in your body? I can do that, you know. Go and leave you somewhere quiet to die a slow, agonizing death, where no one will be able to find your body. Is that what you want?”

Q shakes his head rapidly, back and forth, and at last that seems to pacify Silva. The grip on Q’s arm is lessened and the pain eases up enough to Q to nearly sob in blissful relief.

“You know what she did to me, yes?”

Q nods quickly this time, knowing quick replies will only earn him worse pain. The air in Q-Branch has become oppressively hot, the gun in Silva’s palm almost a searing heat against his skin. He was never trained for this, for this kind of torture like double-ohs were. Listening to a man experience immense pain through the comm in his ear and having real, immense pain overwhelming nearly every nerve ending in his body was simply too much for Q to bear. “You overstepped your boundaries, went against orders, and you were given up.”

“Is that what you would have done?” Silva asks, softly.

Q licks his lips and pauses. “I have orders I must follow, as does everyone here. You know as well as I—”

“I know you care about your agents, Q,” Silva interrupts. “It’s only natural for one such as you. Spending day after day in their ears, talking them through their most intimate of moments, being with them as they breathe their last…only someone with a heart of stone could do this and not feel moved.”

“I follow orders,” Q replies, “and do what is asked of me. W-What you’ve done, Silva, is treason.”

“Hypocrite,” Silva snarls, and breaks another of Q’s fingers. The pain is not as unbearable as the first but Q sobs all the same. He cries out, loudly, in hopes that perhaps a nearby night patrolman will hear him before Silva does something drastic and irreparable, and his mind flashes back inanely to the first day he’d set foot in Six as the newly instilled Quartermaster.

 _These are soundproof, bulletproof glass observation walls_ Tanner had told him as Q followed the chief of staff around the room that was to be his new home. _We’ve hooked the place up with state of the art projectors to display anything you want—that is, strictly for work purposes, of course. No movie nights_ he’d added with a nervous laugh. _M wants this place pretty fortified since all the servers are directly below. Says it’s to keep the things safe and that bloody hum from annoying everyone else within a fifty meter radius._

“Just a few days into the job and you’re already following orders from a known rogue agent, someone below your pay grade, even if you’re terminated for insubordination and treason? My my,” Silva whispers, brushing against Q’s hip with a firm hand, “this little boy does have it bad.”

Q shakes his head, wants to speak and tell Silva he’s out of his mind, but the pain in his arm flares up again and it is all Q can do to gasp wetly and grit his teeth against the pain.

“Would you have done the same for him, Q?”

It wasn’t that he _liked_ the double-oh, god no, he’d just—

Bond had _asked_ him, plain as could be, as if asking if he could trouble Q for an umbrella or borrow a couple quid, and Q had—

“Ah, there it is,” Silva says, scattering Q’s thoughts. “The human error of putting someone with a conscience behind Her Majesty’s most sacred operations.”

Silva’s lips brush against Q’s ear again, lingering for just a moment too long. Q whimpers, involuntarily. “And what would Mommy think of you now? Not such a clever boy any longer, hm?”

Silva twists Q’s arm once more, sharper than before, and this time something snaps. Q’s vision goes white hot as he lets out a shrill, unending, agonized scream.

 

              The trap has been set at old Skyfall manor, and for now, all Bond and M and Kincade are able to do is wait for the rapidly approaching storm to reach the grounds. One will come first, the rain or Silva and his men, that much Bond is sure of. He’s confident in the new Q’s ability to lay down a trail that will lead Silva, cocky and overconfident, straight into their hands, where this time they have the upper hand.

M sits perched on a wide windowsill, peering through the wooden slats at the driveway leading away from the manor and towards the moors, from where they’d came just hours before. Kincade paces, uneasily, back and forth on aged, creaking wood. There’s an unsettled feeling that pervades the very air they breathe, muggy and heavy, and Bond doesn’t like it one bit. It’s as if…he’s missed something, even though he’s quite certain Silva knows not a damned thing about Scotland, or this bloody old house, and for once the man should be out of his element.

Still, Bond can’t help but turn the feeling over in his mind, jaw working as he shifts his gun from hand to hand.

Suddenly, a shrill ringing emanates from his pocket and in the same breath Kincade curses and M nearly jumps out of her skin.

“What the hell is that damned noise?” Kincade grunts, and Bond begrudgingly fishes the burner phone that Q had given him earlier that morning out of his pocket and recognizes that, in fact, it’s Q’s pre-programmed, yet private, number that flashes across the screen.

 “Well, who is it?” M asks. Bond opens his mouth as if to reply, and M shoots him a rather steely glare. “007, this is hardly the time to be answering phone calls.”

Bond shrugs. “It’s Q, actually.”

“Q? What on earth could he be calling for?”

Bond repeats the same unaffected shrug and raises the mobile to his ear. “This ought to be damned important, Q, I’m not exactly in a position for idle chatter.”

“Try again, Mister Bond,” answers a very different voice, one that chills Bond’s blood cold. “I’ve become very acquainted with your dear Quartermaster here. He’s quite clever, you know, laying down little signals to lead me right towards you. It’s quite a shame I’ve come into… _possession_ of him before he could lay the final crumbs.”

Bond swears inwardly. Of course that new Q would go off and get himself captured. “Silva,” he says, voice laced with thinly veiled discontent. “How nice to hear from you again. I was under the impression you wouldn’t be bothering us further.”

“And that could not be further from the truth,” Silva says. “Though of course, I did not call to make idle chatter. I believe have something of yours that you want, yes?”

“Alright,” Bond replies simply. “If you’ve got him, let me see him.”

“Ah, I was hoping you’d say that,” says Silva, with what Bond is sure is a wide, uncomfortable smile. “If you’d be so kind to press the little video icon on your screen, then we can begin.”

Bond does so, and within seconds, an image of Q flashes onto the screen. His hair is askew and matted with what Bond can only hope isn’t the young man’s own blood, his glasses are gone, and his face is twisted into a mask of pain. Q clutches his right shoulder with one hand, breath coming out in low, shallow gasps. The image shakes, Bond assumes, because Q is the one holding the phone in the steadiest hand he can manage.

Behind the man is a wall of stone, though the angle is tight and the light shining upon Q too bright to make out any details. Q squints against the blinding light and turns away, only for Silva to slap Q abruptly and twist his face back towards the camera. A gun enters the frame and nudges against Q’s temple, both encouragement and a warning.

By now M has taken notice of what is occurring and presses her lips together in a thin, hard line, though she remains behind Bond and out of view of the camera. She knows as well as Bond that this is a two-way conversation, whether they like it or not.

“Don’t worry, nothing is irreparably broken,” Silva says from out of frame, breaking the silence. “A dislocated shoulder, a broken finger or two, all easily fixable, lucky for this one.” He ruffles Q’s hair, a sick parody of affection, and Q winces but does not flinch this time. “Nothing compared to what I have suffered, of course. Though, all this can change at the drop of a hat, so to speak.”

Silva’s thumb cocks back the hammer of the gun, and fires off a single round. Blessedly, the bullet misses and cracks against the stone wall behind Q before embedding itself deeply out of sight. The deafening sound maxes out the speakers on the burner phone and they buzz and squeal as the Q onscreen’s eyes grow wide and he reels, clutching his left ear as he drops the phone to the ground. The light that was previously so blinding teeters out of view and the image grows hazy and dark. In the shadows, Bond can barely make out a dusky, desolate flat ground swathed in dirt and weeds. _They’re outside_ Bond realizes, instantly, _but where_?

Silva, noticing the phone is gone, swears something furious and fast, and he dives for the phone. In a flash, Q kicks it further away from the light and it tumbles down and down before finally coming to rest at what could only be the foot of some steep incline. It’s even darker now, out of the light that was trained on Q, and the image lazily focuses in and out as the camera struggles and fails to find a subject to focus on in the fading light.

It’s only a moment before the phone is picked up again, presumably by Silva, and the image shakes and jolts until it once more focuses again on Q, lying prone and immobile on the ground, half in and out of shadow. Silva brings his gun again into frame and cocks the hammer back once more, loading another bullet into the chamber.

“He’s touchingly refused to tell me where you’ve taken Mommy.” Silva continues. He’s breathing heavily from exertion, though trying not to show it. “Ah well, not that it matters.” Silva kicks Q savagely in the side, and Q lets out a low whimper. “Stubborn to the last.”

Now, Silva takes aim, pointing the gun squarely at Q’s forehead. The distance is minimal, the potential damage extreme and unrecoverable. M, somewhere behind Bond, sucks in a deep breath and holds it there.

“Mister Bond, I know that Mommy is somewhere very near now, listening to this, yes? I’d like you to tell her that this little distraction of yours has cost you nothing but time, time you could have spent hanging yourselves both, to cheat me out of the pleasure of personally ending both of your lives. Could you do that for me?”

Bond’s face is impassive, though inside the double-oh is in turmoil unable to prevent whatever Silva is about to do to the Quartermaster.

“I’m coming for you, Mommy,” Silva says again, after a moment of silence, addressing M directly though he cannot see her. “I’m coming very soon now. Yes… _very_ soon.”

A single shot rings out, a burst of light fires from the muzzle of Silva’s gun, and the video feed instantly cuts out, leaving Bond with nothing but a dark, silent phone laying heavy in the palm of his hand.

**Author's Note:**

> ato's part two is up!!
> 
> read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14178741


End file.
